80068mimiwang

[80068mimiwang]

Gentarou Ishizuka – The magic of sight as shown by the Alaskan wilderness

Gentarou Ishizuka is a travelling photographer. The first time he ventured overseas was in his teens, and since then he has been creating international bodies of work spanning from Africa to Asia, which can be seen collected in his book, “World Wide Wonderful”. His standout work, however, is said to be his “PIPELINE” series, where he – as the name suggests – photographs pipelines all over the world.

W.W.W. also refers to the World Wide Web, the heart of the Internet, and through this play on worlds Ishizuka attempts to demonstrate that his work is not only about the journey. It’s also about never losing the curiosity and desire to experience more, and a shifting way of thinking about sight.

In this interview, we ask Ishizuka what being a photographer and the journey means to him.

Amongst his large portfolio of works is “PIPELINE”, a series of photographs of oil pipelines all over the world. In his current exhibition, he gives a new spin on it by turning it into a 360 panorama.

Ishizuka:              I’m sure there are a lot of people who look at this exhibition and sigh exasperatedly, “Not the pipelines again!”. I do often ask myself whether or not I should move onto something different (laughs) but honestly, I still want to do more with this. I started this project in Alaska and have since gone on to photograph pipelines in other places like Australia and Northern Europe, and working on this project takes me back to when I was wandering the globe in my 20s. It’s a subject that’s very charming in its own way.

—What made you want to shoot pipelines in the first place?

Ishizuka:              I first went to Alaska during one of my global adventures, and right outside the Arctic Circle there’s a town called Fairbanks where they’ve got a pipeline for tourists to come and look at. It was a touristy spot where they were selling souvenir hats and the like, and it was surrounded by all this tundra forest. And amongst all that wilderness was this huge metal tube, and I took a lot of photos of it because it just stood out so much. However, it was only when I returned home and revisited the photos I took that I began to really get excited and think “hey, there’s something pretty interesting about this”.

—And that was where it all began.

Ishizuka:                             That was when I started to research pipelines. I found out that it spanned a total of 1280km and I wandered to myself, what does this pipeline look like when it goes past Fairbanks all the way to the north? I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

—And so you decided to start shooting this series.

Ishizuka:              That’s right. I’m the kind of person to lay down the groundwork before I start anything, so before I dove into the project I made two rules for myself. The first was to shoot only on a large format camera, not digital, to capture as much detail as I could. The second was to buy a Ford SUV in Alaska and live on the road while shooting this project.

—You began your journey being bound by these rules?

Ishizuka:              That’s right. Once I crossed the Brooks Range, a mountain range that runs horizontally across Alaska, I was met with this magnificent spread of nature with the pipeline running off endlessly into the distance. And that’s when I, well, fell in love with Alaska, if you’ll excuse the cliché. You could also say that it was also the beginning of a relationship that I can never really pull myself out of (laughs).

—They say that the arctic circle is a realm beyond human comprehension, but could you not also say that the landscape there looks a little dull and barren?

Ishizuka:              Oh no, no. It’s always changing depending on the season and the timing; I could never get tired of photographing it. I would describe my relationship with the pipeline as… Let’s see… There’s a Sri Lankan architect, Geoffrey Bawa, who is known as the father of tropical modernist architecture. At his signature work, a country house called the Lunuganga, he’s got these urns all around the place.

—Urns?

Ishizuka:              Yes, urns. When I was shooting there, I realised that he didn’t put urns all over the place simply because he liked urns, it was to give the eye something to focus on in a sprawling landscape. It’s easy for the viewer to feel a little uneasy when they’re in the middle of a huge sprawl of landscape because of how endless and aimless it can be, so Bawa’s urns were a way for the viewer to not fall into this unease.

And then I realised… these pipelines are to me what those urns were to Bawa. And both urns and pipelines are very simple in form so on the first glance, it can be hard to tell what you’re looking at sometimes. You might have to get right up to the photograph or even stand further from it to tell what it is, but at the same time you might have more questions once you figure out what you’re looking at.

—It makes for an interesting viewing experience.

Ishizuka:              And for an interesting shooting experience. In a large format camera, the film is about the size of an A4 sheet of paper, and the finder is about the same size too. When you’re under the large format camera’s black cloth composing the photograph in the camera, it feels like you’re making a sculpture of the landscape before you. And when you’re doing all this by yourself in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness you can’t help but think, “man, this is kind of dangerous, isn’t it?” (laughs) But it’s fun.

—So what sparked your interest in the visual medium?

Ishizuka:              I think it started with films. When I lived in Tsukiji and commuted to Ikebukuro for school, I’d often coop up in one of the revival houses in Ginza or Takada-no-baba or Ikebukuro whenever I felt like skipping school. I watched a lot of Iranian and Portuguese films then and I really felt that they were showing me a world I had never seen before.

—And that links with this recurring theme of “journey” that you so often explore in your work, right? So on your website you’ve got these portraits of Wim Wenders (a major figure of New German Cinema) and Jean-Luc Godard. What’s that about?

Ishizuka:              I was lucky enough to meet them during my travels and photograph them. I’m a landscape photographer more than anything so I’ve always thought that I’m no good at portraits but photographing a movie director is really something else.

—They let you photograph them when you were just a 20-something backpacker wandering around? Especially Godard, known for being particularly moody. I was really surprised that you were able to get a picture of him looking so amicable.

Ishizuka:              I think he’s only moody before the critics. He was quite accommodating when I went to meet him. I read in a magazine that he lived in a small village by Lake Geneva so I just rode over on a bicycle.

—Oh?

Ishizuka:              I was having breakfast at a café by the lake, and the customer sitting next to me came to talk to me and I said that I was here because I liked Godard. I was extremely lucky, because it turned out that customer was a friend of Anne-Marie Miéville, Godard’s partner. And then even Ms. Miéville herself appeared. (laughs)

—Wow.

Ishizuka:              Ms. Miéville was very amicable and said, “Why don’t you try giving him a call?” and gave me his phone number. I called him right then and there and Godard himself picked up and said to me, “All right, I’ll be there in 30 minutes.”

—That’s quite the story!

Ishizuka:               And it was a really fun shoot. Movie directors have a very keen eye, and they look at everything with that keenness. It really feels like they’re acting the role of themselves. He would direct me like, “open the curtain and let the light in from there”, or “take this shot from in front of the editing gear”. I felt like I was the one being photographed rather than him. (laughs).

—I can see why. (laughs)

Ishizuka:              Wenders and Manoel de Oliveira (a Portuguese director known for being the oldest movie director ever, having passed at the age of 106) were like that too. Happy times… but I digress. I’m still not great with photographing people. I think I’m really meant to be a landscape photographer so I’d like to keep honing my skills in that area.

—So why did you choose to pursue photography over film when you clearly like films so much you’d go chasing film directors?

Ishizuka:              Photography is such a simple and easy way of showing your viewers something. Clicking a shutter is a much more simple action than, say, drawing an entire image by hand. Anyone can take a photo as long as if they’ve got a smartphone with them, and pretty much everyone has one. But when you want to capture something that no one has ever seen or done before you start to question if that’s even possible because photography is so ubiquitous. I’ve been asking myself that question for a very long time.

—You spoke about feeling like you were making a sculpture of the landscape when you’re shooting earlier. How do you feel when, say, you’re at Alaska and it looks just like how you had envisioned?

Ishizuka:              I take my inspiration from the land, so I don’t go somewhere with an image of how it should look in my mind. I think what this “vision” is will be different for each photographer, anyway. Last year, I had the chance to work as a supervisor on the exhibition “Michio Hoshino’s Journey”, a travelling exhibition held in commemoration of 20 years since his death, and I was able to see all of the photos he had taken during his time. And of course, Hoshino did a wonderful job of capturing the animals and landscapes that he did, but they didn’t speak to me in the same way that the pipelines did. And I think that somewhere in there lies the key to what makes photography so wonderful.

—Which is?

Ishizuka:              “Photo” means light, or the sun, and “graphy” means “to draw”, right? So the name itself implies that it’s a result of the coexistence of the manmade and the natural. I feel photos that readily embrace this duality are very pure and authentic. I think what modern day photographers need to do is find new and interesting ways of interpreting and depicting this purity and authenticity.

—And you try to reflect that in your current exhibition and recent work?

Ishizuki:                I’ve been working on a panorama series of glaciers, and for a panorama of an ice floe I’ve had to create it out of numerous images to make one big composite image. If there was a spot that needed filling in, I’d fill it in with a photo from someplace else. So when you’re looking at this ice floe, you’re actually looking at a completely made-up scenery.

―So while reconstructing a real environment into something purely made up and be quite a violent act in and of itself, it also captures this duality of the natural and the manmade that you said makes photography so pure and authentic?

Ishizuka:               Hmm… Yes, that’s part of what makes photography such a unique medium, but I think it’s also related to how tiny our vision, as humans, can be. An ice floe can be around 7 metres tall, about the height of a small housing complex. When you’re out there in rowing amongst these floes the sheer size of them can make you feel like you’re in a space of endless ice, rowing for eternity. These floes have been moving and growing over the span of tens of thousands of years, and trying to capture them in a shot I thought to myself, what am I really taking a photo of here? In trying to capture and contain something that, by its nature, cannot be captured or contained, I began to realise just how foolish I was.

—I guess you could say that that’s the trap of relying on our sight too much. People say that of all the information our five senses receive, 80% of it comes from sight. And that may lead us to being over-reliant on our sight and being too trusting of how things appear. Speaking of sight, you recently announced a new body of work, “N/P” that you shot at home, where you overlay the negative and positive of an image over each other, slightly unmatched. That’s another exploration of the sense of sight, correct?

Ishizuka:               I’m always thinking about this idea of duality in photography, what with the positives and negatives as well. I also find the duality and the huge difference in lugging a large format camera around the Arctic Circle and the vast wilderness, to being cooped up in a tiny darkroom printing photos to be very interesting, photographically speaking.

—Do you find that these scenarios, despite being so different, also have things in common with each other?

Ishizuka:               For how otherworldly and majestic the pipelines are, sometimes a mug left on the table with the light hitting it could be just as beautiful. Sometimes I think that if I could photography that mug and do it justice, I would be the most satisfied man in the world.

Photography is magical in the way that the extraordinary and the ordinary all collide in one single click. That’s what I want to believe, anyway. That’s what I ultimately what to show through my work.

—In a previous interview, you said that when you return to Tokyo after a long period of travel, you ease yourself back home by eating GariGari-kun [a typically blue, lemonade-flavoured ice block popular in Japan] and I thought that was such a perfect way of illustrating how far you are from home when you’re out travelling.

Ishizuka:               Pretty much. When I was eating those GariGari-kuns after I came back from shooting glaciers, I thought, “This thing’s like an ice floe!”

—So a GariGari-kun is capable of making you feel the same sort of wonder the ice in Alaska does.

Ishizuka:               Yes.  And with pipelines, there are people who read at them as emblematic of human and nature, and there are also people who interpret them as a sexual symbol, which I find very interesting . And with photographs that also double as information, you can do a lot of interesting things with it, and at the same time I’m veering into some dangerous territory with it…

—Although this interview started out as one focusing mainly on travel, I feel like we got to explore a lot of other topics, and that was fun. Photographers like Risaku Suzuki and Thomas Ruff who interrogate the sense of sight a lot in their work have been getting very big these past years, too. I can really feel the zeitgeist.

Ishizuka:               Thank you, I had a great time as well. I still have a long way to go in applying my concepts to a body of work, but going forward I think I’d like to work more on how words can be used and exploring the relationship a photograph can have with words.

The boundary between photographs and words used to be pretty clear cut, but now that smartphones and social media are indispensable to our everyday lives, we often turn to photos to show people something instead of describing it. It’s much easier to show someone a photo of, say, whipped cream and have them understand how fluffy and soft it is from that photo than if you used words to describe it to them.

—As someone who writes for a living, I do often feel irritated by how restrictive words can be. I think that’s why a lot of websites, especially ones for entertainment, use collages and images to facilitate laughter and reactions in their readers.

Ishizuka:               I do think that what people want is to communicate with words. I think a lot of people would agree that getting a comment on something is better than getting a like. We all want other people to comment on our photos, that’s why we take them. However, as a photographer, I want to keep honing my wordcraft so I can produce words for photos rather than the other way around, and keep working on it until words and photographs can at least be on equal footing.

—Speaking of, you wrote Glacier Diary, Glacier Bay outlining your photographic journey, which you started writing a few years back, correct?

Ishizuka:               Yes I wrote about my day-to-day happenings and when I docked at the glaciers. I feel like “glacier” and “diary” link together like how I talked about “photo” and “graphy” do  earlier. (laughs) Robert Frank, whom I greatly respect and have learnt a lot from, incorporated a lot of text in his photos. It’s always exciting to try and see which decisions were conscious and which weren’t I’d like to make a body of work that really interrogates the boundaries between image and text one day.

[80068mimiwang]

Mari Katayama – the gift of a universal body

Mari Katayama was born with tibial hemimelia and, at the age of 9, chose to have her legs amputated. She uses many handmade objets d’art in her art, many of which are modelled after various body parts.

Artist Mari Katayama has stunned viewers all over the world with her freshly unique and bold cross-media works, appearing in shows such as the Aichi Triennale 2013 and  Roppongi Crossing 2016. Her mark on the modern art world earnt her a nomination for the Ihei Kimura Award in 2018. She exhibited an experimental body of work curated by artistic director Ralph Rugoff at the Venice Biennale in 2019 and won the Newcomer’s Award at the 35th Higashikawa International Photo Festival. Katayama has also announced, for this spring, a collection of her work thus far presented in a photobook, “GIFT”. Today, we have to opportunity to listen to her speak candidly about facing her circumstances head-on, and her idea of a universal body.

—What does your new photobook mean to you?

Katayama:           If my life so far were a sentence, this book would be its full stop. It’s a nice way round up all the work I’ve done during this time. (laughs)

—I hear that the title, “GIFT” has a double meaning. Could you tell us more about that?

Katayama:           There’s one work in particular that’s symbolic of this title, and it’s this heart-shaped objet d’art into which I’ve incorporated photographs of fingers. I printed photos of husband’s and my fingers onto fabric and made this objet d’art in the three months after giving birth. I think every woman who has experienced pregnancy realises that nothing is what it seems. Before we have a child, we just let the days go by without questioning the way that it is but now that there’s a child with us we have to look after it and worry for it.

During the pregnancy, it was fine if the baby didn’t have any fingers or feet. That’s just how things are, you know. But after I gave birth, I just had to check with the doctor straight away. I asked, “Does my baby have her fingers and feet?” I wanted my child to be born in perfectly good health, and part of me couldn’t stop worrying and thinking “but what if?” If worst came to worst, I’d want to have something to give to my daughter. Everyone is missing something, you know, but if my daughter felt bad for it I’d want her to know that she has the power to make up for whatever it is. I put all of those feelings that I felt as a parent into this objet d’art when I was making it.

However, after the exhibition I was showing it in ended, I looked at it with a new, calmer mindset. I thought to myself, “What would she even do with this?!” (laughs) She’d probably come to me all confused like, “Mum, what do I do with this?” It reminded me of how “gift” can also mean “poison” in German. Because poison is something you get given. It’s such a German way of thinking. The “gift” that I give my daughter for her sake might not even be to her liking. Realising that was a bit of a hard pill to swallow, so that’s why I chose “GIFT” as the title for my photobook.

—So with “GIFT” is the theme running throughout the book. Look back on your past work, what do you feel is particularly “gift”-like about it?

Katayama:           As I am now, I no longer think of my past work as my cute little darlings like I did in the past. Although I am still the same human being, I feel that past me and present me are separate entities. Those works from my past self could even be “poison” to my present self. I’m sure my past self meant for those works to be a gift to my present self, but right now she finds them quite troublesome. (laughs) I am trying to accept them as best as I can, however.

—You have such a diverse way of realising your ideas in your art. Is photography particularly special to you?

Katayama:           No, not particularly. All the work I’ve done so far were installations that incorporated both objets d’art and photography. Now that I’m releasing a photobook, the people who know what I do like to joke “oh, so you’re a photographer now, huh?” (laughs) I never had any professionals watch over me and teach me crafting or photography. I had some help getting my start but most of it has been self-taught. I also sing chanson sometimes, but even that I learnt from a jazz bar I used to work at. So photography isn’t particularly special to me or anything. I never introduce myself as a photographer, but “Hi, I’m an artist who dabbles in a lot of stuff” is too long.

—Could you tell us about how you got into making objets d’art?

Katayama:           I think a big part of it can be attributed to my family members, who I’ve watched sew all my life. My great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother all sewed. I was clubfooted until the age of 9 so I couldn’t wear any ready-made children’s clothes, and my mother dressed me with her own clothes that she had altered to fit me. I used to always watch her alter these clothes and naturally I grew to want to sew, too. And still do now, of course, but I don’t think my mother likes my work very much. She’s always fussing over how rough and unprofessional the finishing is. (laughs)

—What made you want to release a photobook?

Katayama:           For my installation at Roppongi Crossing 2016, I displayed every single objet d’art that I had. And because I did that, I feel like I was able to more wholeheartedly dedicate myself to photography. I then made three series of photographic works, found out I was pregnant, and my workflow and pace started to change and I was able to have more time to myself. I also started to wonder about the works I had let go of and what would become of them, and at that time someone mentioned something about a photobook. I thought that it would be a great chance for me to put them all together in one place and send them out on a new journey into the world.

—And you’ve got the works organised by the year they were made in, right?

Katayama:           My oldest work was from when I was still in university. It was just a self portrait and I never really thought of it as a work of art back then.

I also used to draw and make objets d’art a lot back in high school, but I didn’t really think much of it back then. I started to want to show it to other people so I started uploading pictures of them onto social media like Myspace and Mixi. Shortly after, a stylist called Tatsuya Shimada asked if I would model in a fashion show with him. I accepted and had these drawing done on my artificial leg for that show. I was also encouraged to enter the Gunma Youth Biennale, and I also won an award there. I thought that just photographing my artificial leg by itself would be sort of confusing for viewers so I tried to take photos with it on, in a way that would explain to viewers what it was at the same time, and I ended up with these self portraits.

—Oh wow! So your start in photography was through social media? So you would’ve started using it around 2005. That’s quite early.

Katayama:           My dad works in data processing so I got to familiarise myself with the internet quite early on. I made my first website using HTML when I was 15, and I still use it. That’s why it looks kind of outdated. (laughs) I went to a commercial high school because I wanted to get into IT. I never thought I would end up going to art school and becoming an artist.

—When did you start consciously taking self-portraits?

Katayama:           To be honest, I still don’t call those photos self-portraits. It feels just as weird as calling myself a photographer, because the person in those portraits isn’t me. I just happen to be the only model that will do whatever I say and pose in the exact way I want.

Communicating with someone that isn’t me will always require verbal communication, and no matter how much understanding we can mutually reach it will never be exactly as I want. There’s always going to be a gap between what I want and how the model interprets it. The only time I became aware that I was taking a self portrait was when I was taking pictures of myself when I was pregnant, because that was when I specifically wanted to leave a photographic record of how I was in that moment.

—After your 2014 work you’re mine, you started to move from photographing inside your own house to outdoors. At the same time, you started doing more of your work in Gunma, right?

Katayama:           I had my first solo gallery exhibition at TRAUMARIS | SPACE. Along with you’re mine, I also exhibited an objet d’art made of plaster in the shape of my own body. I went to my parent’s house once when I was making that work. Working with all that plaster was a lot of work and I needed a proper space to do it in, so I decided to make it where my parents were living, in Ota City, Gunma.

At that time, the new gallery in Maebashi City, Arts Maebashi, started a new project called Artist in Residence (AIR) and invited me to be their first resident artist. From October 2014 and February 2015 I stayed there for 55 days over the course of three months and made work there. I often take off my artificial leg so I can focus on my work so until I was invited to do AIR I was only able to make work at home. I was a bit worried but the people I met at Maebashi made me feel at home. We became friends that would go drinking every night and they really helped me out a lot, and we created a lot of photographs during that residence. It was then that I realised that perhaps them most important thing for an artist was a space in which they feel comfortable creating their work in. Then, in 2015, I returned to Ota City, where I was born and raised.

I now live in Isesaki City. There’s nothing here but farmland, but I find it quite interesting. There are cows being raised here not for their meat or milk, but to make fertiliser. They just eat, sleep, poop, eat again, and repeat day after day on this huge farm. It makes me kind of emotional. (laughs) When you’re driving around Isesaki you can see all these huge sago palms on the side of the road and the interesting plants people are growing in their gardens. Although I say that there’s nothing out here in the country side, you can flip that around and say that there is a lot of something here, and that’s space. When there’s this much space, people are going to use it, and I like to see what they do with it.

—You mentioned that the photobook was a way of marking an end of an era for your work, so what do you plan on doing moving forward?

Katayama:           I feel like I have a lot more freedom now. I’ve been in the art world for 10 years now, and by meeting more and more people I feel more and more potential in myself. I only dabbled in photography a bit in the past but now I’m making more conscious efforts to take photos, and I think that this is a big change for me. In the past six months I’ve gone out and taken a lot of landscape photos in Michigan in the US and the Watarasegawa area around my home.

—Why the switch to landscape photography?

Katayama:           I’m more interested in photographing the people within the landscape rather than the landscape itself. Environments we call “natural” usually always has some sort of manmade element in it. Thinking of landscapes as something people made for themselves makes me appreciate them more. I love to think about how a place was formed and what kind of people inhabited it. But that doesn’t mean that I want to specifically photograph people going about their day to day lives. It sounds kind of contradictory when I say that after saying I want to photograph human activity, but I plan to explore this further in a future body of work.

—Would you say a landscape being formed by the acts of humans is similar to how you expressed that you as an artist was formed by the people you’ve met?

Katayama:           I think yes, and no. Thinking back on my life, I don’t think I’ve achieved anything according to my own will and desire. I tried my best in school and in job hunting because I was expected to, but that was it.

—So you feel like the effort you’ve put in and the results you’ve gotten are very disconnected from your own desire?

Katayama:           I feel like what I’m disconnected from is this notion of “normal”. What I wish for isn’t particularly hard to achieve but it somehow keeps eluding me. The harder I try and reach for it the further it gets, and what I end up grabbing is something else entirely. It’s gotten me down a lot in the past but now I see this as another one of life’s little surprises. I’ve slowly come to accept that I can’t become what is “normal”, and that’s fine.

When I’m choosing clothes for my child I like to pick something that’s a little different from what I see around us, but then my friends say to me “why did you pick that?” (laughs). Even for the clothes I pick for myself! All my life I’ve been fighting with wanting to be “normal” but knowing deep down that I can’t, but now that I’ve accepted that I will never be “normal” I’m looking forward to what will unfold in my life. I have no idea what’s going to happen but it’s exciting.

—You speak about yourself like you’re speaking about another person.

Katayama:           I think I do tend to, yeah. I feel like I’m observing this Mari Katayama person all the time and think “maybe I should’ve laughed here” or “maybe I should act happy here”.

—You seem to be very aware of and sensitive where you stand in society.

Katayama:           Yes, I often think about how I could just try and blend into the “normal” of society and live like that but it won’t ever feel right, and I feel like part of that is due to how my body feels. Sort of like how left-handed people will always feel a bit left out in a right-handed society. If you’re different in some way, how you feel towards society and how people act towards you will also differ greatly, and I think that’s interesting.

Of course that doesn’t mean you should just be happy about your circumstances, but I’m lucky in the way that because I have a body and sense that’s different from “normal” I notice things and make connections between things that other people don’t. And because of that, I was able to make a lot of great friends. Ms. Kazue Kobata told me that I have a very universal body because I’m able to experience so many different things in this way, and I love that. I’m able to surpass the boundaries of language, gender, and culture to connect with others not because of my disability per se, but because of how my body was built. Ms. Kobata taught me that this is what it means to be different from other people.

—Normality and common sense are what connect people, but on the other hand it also carries the risk of dividing them. But when you know you are different from someone, you pre-emptively try to avoid that divide. When you realise that you are different from someone, you know to not judge them according to your common sense so now you’re less likely to accidentally offend them.

Katayama:           Exactly, and I think that’s how we’re able to connect. And you’re able to also realise that even if someone seems like they’re living a normal life on the outside, they probably have their own unique story or circumstances even if it’s not visible in “normal” society. I hope that whenever someone meets me and gets to know about my circumstances, they can realise that there are many different perspectives to the society we all live in and that every perspective is worth knowing about.

I did seriously consider becoming a public servant once upon a time, before I happened to fall into the career of an artist. I thought someone with my life experience would be great in Residential Affairs at the Town Hall. I still wonder why I still ended up pursuing something different to what I wanted, but even though I didn’t become the person I wanted to I think that’s ok. Where I would be making one-on-one contact as a residential affairs officer, I would be reaching out to a wider and farther audience as an artist. Reaching out to many other people is part of an artist’s job, and I believe that this is the mission I’ve been given.

Reference: Wakayama, M. 2019, ‘Katayama Mari intabyuu yunibaasaru na shintai to iu GIFT’, weblog, IMA, viewed 31 May 2020, <https://imaonline.jp/articles/interview/20190819mari-katayama/#page-1>.

[80068mimiwang]

We asked a professional photographer why he uses film, and what he tells us was deeper than we expected.

Hello! It’s Suzaki from the creative department.

Every day we at Edimart Magazine create a lot of articles for print and websites, and so we work with photographers a lot. After watching these photographers work day in and day out, I started to wonder: why do film cameras exist?

In a world where digital cameras are by far the most dominant, why would someone choose to shoot film? Of course, I’ve shot film for fun before because I thought there was something neat about the way analogue photographer captures things in such a natural way, but why would a professional choose film for their work?

So, today we visited professional photographer Yoshitaka Furukawa at his studio to ask him about this matter! Furukawa uses heaps of film for his work and also gives us a lot of modish and avant-garde photos!

Suzaki:                  Hi! I’m here to ask you some questions about film cameras. Pleased to meet you!

Furukawa:           I’m pleased to meet you too. I’ll try to answer your questions as best as I can.

Suzaki:                  Then let’s get into it! You use both digital and film in your work, right?

Furukawa:           That’s right. I use both mediums.

Suzaki:                  I’ve been curious about this for a while, but why use film in a digital era? Film and the things you need to develop film are very costly, not to mention that developing also takes a lot of time. And, unlike digital, you can’t check if the photo you’ve taken was taken right. Honestly, the cons seem to be mounting against the pros.

Furukawa:           It’s true that it takes a lot of time and money, but professionals don’t have to worry about if the photo was taken right. We know how to light and expose a scene and what kind of lenses will produce the effect we want.

Suzaki:                  That’s true! And that’s why you’re the professional, not me. When I was a kid, film was the dominant medium, and I had a lot of fun wondering how the photos would turn out and if I even took them properly. Now that I think about it, only an amateur would have to worry about stuff like that!

Furukawa:           Of course, I think that one of the wonderful things about film is that you could get back a photo that was beyond anything that you could’ve imagined, but you wouldn’t want to hear a professional say “ooh, this came out well! Lucky!” That wouldn’t be good. (laughs)

Suzaki:                  True, true. (laughs)

Furukawa:           I believe that there are no coincidences in the photos a professional takes. Not many professionals think, “wow, I’m really looking forward to seeing how my photos develop.” I tend to think more like “All right, it’s come out the way I imagined. That’s good.”

Suzaki:                  So you’ve already got an idea of what it will look like before you’ve even pressed the shutter.

Furukawa:           Yes. I’ve got the skills to reproduce what I imagine on film, so nothing is a result of coincidence. Since we’re talking about professional photography today, I’ll try and speak from my professional point of view.

 Suzaki:                  What do you feel are the biggest differences between a film photograph and a digital photograph?

Furukawa:           With how digital camera has developed, you can now take photos that look a lot like film. They’re not exactly the same, but an amateur won’t be able to tell what the difference is most of the time.

Suzaki:                  What? So the image output is pretty much the same?

Furukawa:           There are differences in tone and exposure latitude, but for me the process is the biggest difference. Even if you shoot the same subject with both, the result’s going to be very different.

Suzaki:                  What do you mean by that?

Furukawa:           First, you should know what a latent image and visible image is. A latent image is one that you can’t see until it’s developed. When you press the shutter on a film camera, it exposes the film with the image before you, but it’s still invisible to you. It only becomes visible when you expose and fix it to photographic paper. And I think that the ability to produce a latent image is one of the unique benefits of film photography. Suzaki:                  And the visible image is, well, the image after it becomes visible, right? With a digital camera, you can see it straight away on the screen.

Furukawa:           When you’re working with a director or a client, they want to be able to see how the photo looks right then and there, so that’s one important aspect to consider.

Suzaki:                  I see. So while it might not be too important for the photographer, it could be for the other people they’re working with.

Furukawa:           That’s why I say that the process up until the completion of the photograph is different for film and digital photography. Of course, you can show them a polaroid of the scene so they can get a rough idea of the composition of the photograph, but you can’t compare it to the exact detail you can get from showing them a digital photograph. However, on the other hand, because it’s difficult to show someone else how a film photograph will look before you’ve actually developed it, it makes it easier for the photographer’s personal vision to shine through. Because you can show the director or the client how a digital photograph has turned out on the spot, it’s easier for the director’s vision to start creeping in.

Suzaki:                  So you recommend digital for when you have a client that wants to look at the photos on the spot or if the project is a collaborative one where the directors or other people involved want to be able to fine tune the images?

Furukawa:           That’s right.

Suzaki:                  I’m a director myself, so I prefer to be able to check the photos during the shoot… I can’t really think of any more pros for film…

Furukawa:           If you’re told “we’re going to photograph a girl with an apple”, we’d all have to imagine it first, right? But what everyone imagines will be different, so we’d all have to confer a lot to reach a compromise.

Suzaki:                  Yeah, like we could have the girl hold the apple, or just look at it, or photograph her harvesting it, and then we’d have to consider what angle the apple should be at, if it should have a bright or dark tone…

Furukawa:           Right, there are a lot of routes we can take. We could easily get something very original if we combine all the input from the photographer, director, hair and makeup artists, and stylists.

Suzaki:                  With digital photography, we can give precise instructions like “shoot more from this angle” rather than just discuss what kind of vibe we want to go for.

Furukawa:           Yes, or “make this part a bit more visible”. The discussion tends to not be very conceptual, but more precise.

Suzaki:                  And then the director ends up taking over…

Furukawa:           That’s not too big a problem, because a lot of shoots are there to realise whatever image the director has in mind. But what if we’re doing a shoot where the director wants the photographer’s vision to shine through? For shoots like that, I ask the director to describe what they want of me even if they have to describe it in an abstract way, like if they want a warm vibe, or a rainy day vibe, and we can work from a common idea from there. We do tend to discuss with each other more when I’m shooting film over digital.

Suzaki:                  Again, the process is more important that the output, right? So do you feel like there’s a greater sense of teamwork when you work this way?

Furukawa:           Yes, because if you can’t see the image you have no choice but to discuss with each other more. I mentioned that shooting film allows the photographer’s vision to come through easier, but sometimes when you’re working with a director that you have great artistic chemistry with, even if you end up with a shoot that doesn’t look like how you imagined it doesn’t really matter because you still end up with something that speaks to you. And that sort of chance element of film is fun in its own way.

Suzaki:                  So you’re not banking on getting a good image by chance per se, but rather you’re saying that film gives you the chance to create something new and interesting with the creative visions of two or more people.

Furukawa:           I don’t know if I should really describe it as “chance”, but…

Suzaki:                  Would you call it, like, a chemical reaction between two visions then?

Furukawa:           A chemical reaction, huh… Hm… that doesn’t sound quite right either.

Suzaki:                  Um, then… a creation that surpasses the limits of the director’s imagination!

 Furukawa:           Basically, digital is good for when you require realism. It takes a lot more work to shoot something abstract on digital.

Suzaki:                  It’s good for when you want to show your subject as it is.

Furukawa:           Yes, like when you want to capture the exact colour of a sweater, or the texture of ceramicware. But even then, I don’t think it’s that different from the detail film can capture…

Suzaki:                  (laughs)

 Suzaki:                  You often use film when we get you to take photos of the celebrities we interview, don’t you?

Furukawa:           A big part of that is because you and I have a strong relationship where we trust each other, but another big factor is that the time I have to shoot is usually very short.

Suzaki:                  That’s true. Most interviews take 20-30 minutes, so the photographer only gets about 5-10 minutes to shoot…

Furukawa:           When the client doesn’t need to confirm the photos, film saves us a bit of time because you won’t be tempted to check every photo because there is no way to. And with the time saved, I can take a lot more variants. But I get that sometimes the editor might get a bit worried if they can’t check the photos.

Suzaki:                  No, not really. (laughs) I always consult with the editors on what kind of photos they want. In fact, I’m very grateful that you shoot variants for us to choose from.

Furukawa:           And there are a lot of celebrities who are into cameras and photography so they always seem pleasantly surprised to see me shooting film.

Suzaki:                  Oh yeah, like Gen Hoshino! [a famous J-Pop singer]

Furukawa:           Yeah! I was able to get a really good photo of when he was curiously looking at my camera. I think film cameras make a shoot just that much more interesting.

Suzaki:                  I remember that when you were photographing Takuya Kimura [an extremely famous actor], you used digital, right? Was that because of all the staff on set that wanted to be able to check the photos?

Furukawa:           Part of it was because I was so swept up by the atmosphere that I ended up going with digital because I wanted the staff to approve of my photos. (laughs)

Suzaki:                  Ahh, understandable. (laughs)

Furukawa:           I felt kind of bad for you having to do a one-on-one interview with Mr. Kimura while surrounded by about 30 staff members. (laughs)

Suzaki:                  Yeah, I was so nervous…

 Suzaki:                  So digital is good for when you want to be able to share the image with other people before moving on to shoot the next one, but when you have your own vision that you want to create, you would say that film is the better one regardless of what you want to shoot?

Furukawa:           Yes, because of how little difference there is in the overall look once you compare the final digital and film image. The concept is what’s important, so I pick the medium based on how the director wants to express their project.

Suzaki:                  I see. I thought you were just a film lover that wanted to shoot film whenever possible. Sorry!

Furukawa:           Well, if they tell me that I can choose whichever I want I will usually always pick film. (laughs) But for my personal exhibition SWIMMING POOOL, I chose to shoot digital.

Suzaki:                  What? But you love film!

Furukawa:           Yeah. (laughs) I wanted to express the sense of claustrophobia and entrapment that so often comes with society and politics, so based on that concept I chose digital over the free and expressive film.

Suzaki:                  Oh, I see.

Furukawa:           Because you can check digital photos on the spot, you will inevitably be influenced by the visible image it gives you. Shooting film involves connecting what’s in your head and the reality before you, so you have to really focus on the subject, and this leaves you less susceptible to outside influences. I feel like that’s why I’m able to shoot more freely on film.

Suzaki:                  So… instead of sparing energy on checking the photos, you can instead concentrate your full efforts on the shoot itself? Um, basically, the concept is more important than the aesthetics and stuff. The young people out there who want to become professionals should keep this in mind!

Furukawa:           Film is getting very popular with the young people nowadays, but I feel like all of their photos look very similar. Of course, there are exceptions, but this is the general trend that I have observed.

Suzaki:                  Could you elaborate on that?

Furukawa:           I think it’s because they don’t have a solid concept in mind, or that they just rely on shooting in auto mode on a compact camera. A lot of these photos are just snapshots of their day to day life. I think social media plays a big part in this, too, because a lot of people want photos that they can share easily on social media.

Suzaki:                  So what you’re saying is that film should just be a tool that they can choose to use, but they should really be focusing on being able to tell a story in every shot.

Furukawa:           Yes, film is just one of the many choices. For me, it’s one of the tools I can choose to use to express what the director wants. If you see the camera as a tool for bringing out a vision without having the ability or skill to express a vision of your own, you won’t be able to do well in a task where someone tells you that you can take the picture however you like.

Suzaki:                  Commercial photography and art photography are different in many ways, after all. For one, you’ll most likely be taking orders from a director when shooting commercially, and being able to fulfill their demands is what a professional needs to be able to do.

Furukawa:           Yes, and you can’t really deviate from those demands. You need to understand what you’re going to shoot, then pick your medium based on that.

Suzaki:                  Have you ever had someone tell you that the photos you shot look different from what they wanted after you’ve delivered them?

Furukawa:           Not really. They tend to complain about the noise more often.

Suzaki:                  Right! Film tends to have a reputation for being either really grainy or being soft and dreamy. It has that reputation because the noise is so distinct in film. You mentioned that digital and film look pretty much the same, but what about the noise? Is there a big difference there?

Furukawa:           Now that you mention it… maybe, yeah. (laughs) If you want to produce noise digitally, you can up the ISO or shoot in darker conditions, but it still feels different from the noise film produces.

Suzaki:                  But when a digital photo is grainy, the client just thinks that it’s bad quality and they end up requesting the high-res file. (laughs)

Furukawa:           Through out the history of cameras, people have constantly been improving on the build of lenses and the capabilities of film to allow everyone to be able to take a great photo with the click of the shutter. I’ve been told by directors who have been working since the film era that I’m stuck in the past when I take photos with a lot of noise.

Suzaki:                  I guess in that case he just didn’t find any appeal in that sort of aesthetic. There are people who will think grainy photos are just old-fashioned but I think on the other hand, young people might find it fresh and unique.

Furukawa:           Yes, that’s why if I sense that someone I’m working with might not understand film, I don’t suggest it to them.

Suzaki:                  Yeah. It’d be an awful waste of money too if they don’t understand film.

Furukawa:           Every job is different. I choose digital when I think there’s a need to share the photos with the director on the spot, and when I feel that it’s better to not in order to produce a photograph that fits the director’s vision, I’ll go with film. Once you get to really understand film, you’ll come to realise that there are a lot of things that only film can produce.

Suzaki:                  And that’s how you mentally sort digital and film?

Furukawa:           Of course, there are things that only digital photography can produce. It’s hard to sum it up in one sentence, but if I were to try, it’d probably be something like “there are things that can only be realised through the invisible image of film”.

Suzaki:                  And that’s why you still work with film.

 Suzaki:                  Since we’re on the subject of film photography, could you share with us some of the failures you’ve experienced when shooting film?

Furukawa:           I actually had a shoot where I was working with Motoki Matsumoto over here who is photographing us today, and during that shoot I accidentally shot over a roll of film that already had photos on it. Those photos ended up quite… fantastical. (laughs)

Matsumoto:       Double exposure! Of course we redid the shoot because that wasn’t the effect that we wanted, but… Is it all right if I butt in for a bit?

Suzaki:                  Yes, of course. (laughs) I’ll put your profile down below so the readers don’t get too confused.

Matsumoto:       Thank you kindly. (laughs) I want to be interviewed like Furukawa is, too!

Suzaki:                  Well, um… Maybe next time! I’m so sorry!

—Our photographer for today: Motoki Matsumoto, a photographer who has been working for the modelling agency Giotto in the creatives department since 2012. He works in website design, editing, advertising, still photography, and video.

 Furukawa:           That double exposure incident happened not long after I went solo, so at that point in time I had only just started shooting film for work. I chose film because back then I thought that the colour of film was superior to digital. I was shooting on 120mm film with a medium format back then, and it took me a lot of work to fully understand it because it was so different from 35mm film.

Suzaki:                  What other things do you remember failing at?

Furukawa:           Shooting without film… If you’re not familiar with how the advance lever should feel and sound when the camera’s loaded with film and when it’s not, you could end up going a whole shoot with no film.

Suzaki:                  Oh, I’ve heard of that one before.

Furukawa:           And also, shooting with the lens cap still on…

Suzaki:                  That happens a lot more than you’d imagine, doesn’t it? Developing a photo only to find that you’ve taken a picture of absolutely nothing is the worst.

 Suzaki:                  Do you use film, Motoki?

Matsumoto:       Not anymore, but when I was starting out I used a film camera to help drill the camera’s functions into my head.

Suzaki:                  So you’d recommend beginners to start with film?

Furukawa:           Yes, because to really understand the functions of a camera, you need a camera that cannot shoot in auto mode. Even better, get a camera that has no exposure meter.

Suzaki:                  I tried to borrow one from a photographer once but I ended up giving up… (laughs)

Furukawa:           (laughs) It’s easy to adjust digital cameras because there’s a screen you can look at, but if you’re unfamiliar with film you have to leave a lot of it to chance. You also have to learn a lot through trial and error. I think it would be fun for a beginner to keep in mind that throughout your practise, you could get lucky and take the perfect once-in-a-lifetime shot.

Suzaki:                  I learnt so much about the differences between film and digital, and the skills and thought processes a professional needs. Thank you so much, Furukawa and Motoki!

Reference: Suzaki, M. 2020, ‘Nande firumu kamera tsukatteru no? Puro ni kiitara, sono riyuu ga igai to fukakatta’, weblog, Edimart Magazine, Nagoya, viewed 31 May 2020, <https://edimart.jp/edimag/ichiran/p1449/>.

[80068mimiwang]

The Work of Photographer, Mr. Ahn Sehong

On New Year’s Eve, I met with Korean photographer Ahn Sehong, his wife Lee Shiori, and little Yeon-soo who had just turned 6 years old. Ms. Lee, who is bilingual, interpreted for us as Mr. Ahn does not speak Japanese very well.

In 2001, Mr. Ahn announced that he would be working on a project photographing the Korean comfort women, whom he affectionately calls halmeoni (grandmother in Korean), who were left in China by the Imperial Japanese Army. He originally planned to exhibit at Nikon Salon in 2012, but was suspended due to pressures from the right wing. The court ruled that Mr. Ahn should be allowed to exhibit, and the lawsuit between Mr. Ahn and Nikon for violating his freedom of speech is still ongoing.

In November 2003, Mr. Ahn and volunteers from Korea, China, and Japan rose to aid former Korean comfort women living in poverty and suffering alone. He wrote of his motivations in his report:

“When I was photographing these halmeoni¸I always wished that I could do something to help them out. At first, I thought that as a photographer, the best thing I could do was to photograph them and teach people about these women who were abandoned in a foreign country through my work. However, as time went on, I realised that these halmeoni needed material and practical aid. I met with three last year and as I bore witness to their increasingly deteriorating quality of life, I had to reassess what limits there are to what a photographer can do.

No matter what I do, I can never heal the wounds and the hurt these halmeoni have had to endure. All I can do for these women is to concentrate my efforts on making sure that they can live the rest of their lives well in a good environment, and to help them feel less lonely.”

Mr. Ahn was able to recruit 25 volunteers from Japan, Korea, and China, and 70 sponsors.

Last Summer, Mr. Ahn travelled to Indonesia, the Philippines, and East Timor to visit, interview, and document the comfort women there. He showed me the portraits of those women on New Year’s Eve in Nagoya. The women were all over 80, with deep wrinkles in their faces. Looking into their sorrowful yet sharp eyes, I feel a twinge of pain in my heart. The onus of leaving proper records of the victims should be on the journalists of Japan, the perpetrating country, yet this task has been left to the Korean photographers who have to spend their own time and personal funds visiting various countries to look for and photograph the comfort women.

Mr. Ahn has not only photographed the comfort women, but also recorded them on video. However, as the women live across many different areas and speak many different languages, Mr. Ahn alone cannot handle the extensive work involved in translating them. Nevertheless, wanting to let the people of Japan learn about them as soon as possible, he rented a small gallery in Nagoya and opened his own self-funded exhibition. It was only open for 6 days over the span of two weekends, but over 300 people attended. Amongst those were a few uninvited guests, a right-wing group of about 20 people who wished to harm the exhibition by blocking it so that the other guests could not enter.

Is it really okay for us Japanese people to be unconcerned about what Mr. Ahn’s work, which he continues not for the sake of profit, but for what he believes is right? I think the least we can do is to support Mr. Ahn by letting more people know about what he is doing, which I think is a worthwhile endeavour. We can do this by raising funds to first, allow Mr. Ahn to continue his work, and second, to hire foreign exchange students or professional translators to translate the interviews that Mr. Ahn has recorded into Japanese and English. We should also look for a platform or venue (such as an exhibition or media space) to get word of his work out, etc.

What we need to do is not just interview and then show those interviews, but to think of how we can help the people who were hurt. Seeing Ahn Sehong’s way of life has made me question and reconsider my own attitude as a journalist and messenger.

Reference: Doi, T. 2015, ‘Hibi no zakkan: shashinka An Sehon-shi no shigoto’, Doi Toshikuni WEB koramu, weblog, viewed 27 May 2020, <http://www.doi-toshikuni.net/j/column/20150101.html>.